Reading Proust in Berkeley

03/13/2014

A Rush of Thoughts in My Head, When Considering Proust and Lost Time

It comes down to this: Proust is seeking to uncover and experience “[f]ragments of existence withdrawn from Time” (TR, 268).

That’s his aim.

But what does that mean?

In the last section of the novel he finally reveals his sense of what he wants to do with his remaining life: he wants to set about matching up his past experiences – available to him in their full sensual detail, through the power of involuntary memory – with his present experiences, which just so happen to echo or reflect or reorient or elaborate or otherwise present a variation of these past experiences.

He feels he can do this by drawing from his own "current of pain" (TR, 204) -- the travails of his life so far -- and matching what he finds there with his present interpretations and variations of similar experiences.

This matching game will, along the way, provide nothing less than the structure and the content for his novel (which is, in fact, the very one we are already reading).

*

The first thing to note is that this matching exercise absolutely requires the operation of time.

For, think about it, first there is

Experience A

and

it

must

lead

to

Experience B.

...before they can be paired together.

That is, time has to be "found" before it is "lost" (and finally, "regained").

Quite obviously then, these two experiences – A and B – cannot be too close together in time, or the sensation of "extratemporality” (TR, 262) would not be attained.

(By the way, Freud famously called a similar sensation “the oceanic feeling." Spinoza, Wittgenstein and others in traditional philosophy have borrowed from Latin to dress it up, referring to the possiibilty of viewing the world sub specie aeternitatis... Seen in this context, Proust's claim of the achievement of "extra-temporality" is actually quite modest.)

Proust's aim, then, is to abolish time, by first letting it play out... and then snapping it shut in a container of his own creation.

By transposing two like experiences, you catch it and -- poof! -- it vanishes.

That is what his novel represents: a willfully undertaken "optical illusion" that abolishes Time.

*

A first quibble: I would question whether this rhetoric is a bit inflated.

Really, when you think about it, the transposition of experience A and experience B does not create extra-temporality or timelessness, but merely the sensation thereof. Right?

Question: once we see through the optical illusion, once we learn how to perform the trick, does it still work?

That aside, though, let's ask a deeper question: what does Proust's discovery of this "extra-temporal" sensation mean for us, the readers, in our own lives?

Well, according to Proust, we must first live – awkward, tongue-tied, usually overwhelmed by the flood of sense-data coming at us – then we must recollect, in an involuntary manner, these sensations and reinterpret them, if you will, through our ever-changing “I” in the present (TR, 288).

He rests nearly all his understanding of the meaning of life on this repeated two-step (arguably three-step?) process.

Live. Recollect...

Reinterpret.

Indeed, to Proust, this is the supreme value of art, i.e. that it provides an opportunity for these kinds of “real but not actual” (TR, 264), “translucid” (TR, 271) experiences to occur.

His novel represents one example of this. Art, after all, is the method by which he claims this is best achieved.

Oh, and there's one important, additional benefit...

According to Proust, art allows us to communicate with others – enter into their imaginative worlds and them into ours – through this “translation” and shared experience of the “common essences of things”.

The reader “reads himself” (TR, 322) in the work of art of another.

*

Clear?

Sure!

More than that: it's a brilliant theory of aesthetics.

We are all indebted to Marcel Proust for his achievement in this great novel (indebted as he is to Schopenhauer, Bergson, Ruskin, et al.).

I am clearer than I have ever been about the nature of my experiences when I am moved by art. Aren't you?

*

But I want to ask: why does Proust stop at art?

I could offer, just off the top of my head, a number of examples of similar seemingly “extra-temporal,” oceanic experiences that lie outside the realm of art:

They can happen during the contemplation of, or immersion in, nature. (As Proust himself experiences in Combray, walking among his beloved hawthorns.)

They can happens during physical exertion. (Probably unknown to Proust; rarely known to me but I have heard tell...)

They can come in the form of intellectual epiphanies. (Proust says these are “sterile,” but in fact they can give great pleasure, perhaps equal to that of art, in my experience.)

Love makes them possible (He knows this, but claims that love degenerates quickly, turns possessive, jealous, etc., and so is not the same.)

Friendship (Surely, if cultivated, friendships grow richer and richer as we age.)

Parenting (An experience entirely unknown to Proust, but, we may imagine, known to his mother and grandmother.)

So my first criticism of Proust’s solution to the riddle of life, as presented in the novel, is that it is unnecessarily limited to art.

Do you disagree?

Is art unique in some way that I am not grasping?

If so, why?

*

What then, is the point of life according to Proust?

His answer to this question, as far as I understand it, is simple and straightforward: the point is to experience joy, just as he did when he was a boy, but even more deeply felt, as a grown-up.

Make yourself available to those “intermittencies of the heart,” as he calls them.

That’s it.

*

Fine. No criticism from me there.

I agree that this is all we can ask for, really.

But here is my severest criticism for Proust.

It seems to me that, to be more accurate, Proust should openly acknowledge that the work he is engaged in is not really all that important once he is dead! It is merely a form of animal activity that gives him pleasure, acute pleasure.

Yes, yes, as we have seen, he emphasizes the communicative potential for art (TR, 299-300).

But even if this is true, he does not articulate a moral imperitive behind this communication. He never does say why such communication is intrinsically important in some way. (My own view is that it is beautiful and pleasing, just like friendship, no more.)

I would argue that Proust could not articulate why we need to communicate with others, even if he wanted to... For there is no moral imperative; there is only his urge to do so. (Charlus and Madame Verdurin and the Duchess and Bloch could tell you that. So could Marcel.) There is only a mix of conflicting motives and values (justice, pleasure, loyalty, equity, excitement, tranquility, etc.), each of us having our own unique brain, influenced by our won unique experiences, for as long as we live.

So where I am heading with this?

I am heading to this.

Granted, this book need not say anything. It is astonishing and beautiful on its own terms.

But to the extent that it has an argument embedded inside of it, this argument strikes me as a justification of the work of a writer or any artist.

And this part -- what we finally get to in Time Regained -- is admittedly very insightful, particularly on how the experience of ecstasy works in a kind of mulitiple-staged process, necessarily involving the operation of time.

But I want to point out that we could imagine a parallel book that justified, instead of the work of a writer, the work of... I don't know.... an Iron Man Triathlete?

It would show her losing faith, gradually building her strength in muscle and mind, interacting with other competitors and friends. In the end she would learn to run the full Iron Man, and the memories – full of sensual data – would inform the present moment in a way that, as she crossed the finish line, would create a feeling of “extra-temporality”…

Just so we’re straight on that.

Proust hasn't found anything timeless, it seems to me. Rather he has shared with his readers his preferred way through life, as someone inclined to aesthetic and ethical contemplation. That is all. And that is enough.

*

So the curiously unstated, but deeper conclusion I draw from Proust's novel is: to each his or her own.

Live your ecstasy.

If it's writing a 3000 page novel...

Or if it is training for an Iron Man...

Whatever you do, though, I agree with Proust: just don’t be a dilettante. (He resents this term when Charlus tries to apply it to him, calling his tacit acceptance of it "idiotic," and adding, "I could not be accused of the slightest suggestion of dilettantism" TR, 172.)

No, don't glance along the surface. If you find your ecstasy, Proust's novel and his life together suggest, go all the way into it.